He said Apple's size, location, and market cap were the only things tying it to other tech companies. The firm is close to the trillion-dollar valuation it passed last year, putting it in the same company as Amazon and Microsoft.

Cook said a big difference between Apple and the rest of Silicon Valley was the company's approach to privacy. "We don't traffic in your data," he said.

The presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has been especially vocal in calling for big tech to be broken up, and she named Apple specifically in March. "Apple, you've got to break it apart from their App Store," Warren told The Verge's Nilay Patel. "It's got to be one or the other. Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They don't get to do both at the same time."

Cook did not mention Warren by name in his interview with CNBC but said calls for breaking up big tech made for good political "sound bites," adding: "I don't view them as having deep substance in them."